April 28, 2009

This Guitar Bot has a real interesting sound. What would be cool is an iPhone app that would allow rea time interaction with the musical device.

"GuitarBot is an electrified slide guitar that is versatile, responsive and easy to control, with high-quality sound. Now in it’s third iteration, the instrument consists of four independent single-stringed slide guitar units controlled by a motorized belt that moves a sliding bridge. The pick mechanism consists of mounted four guitar picks that rotate on a shaft. Each unit is independently tunable and has a 2-octave range. The bridge can move from one end of the range to the other in 1/4 second and each has an electromagnetic pickup also of their design."

[…] This guitar bot is part of the Legue of Electronic Musical Urban Robots, or LEMUR. As you can see in the video, it has 4 strings, each mounted on it’s own unit. The pitch is controlled by a sliding bridge, while the strings are plucked by a series of picks mounted to motor. The sliding bridge is quite fast, being able to shift 2 whole octaves in a quarter of a second. The final effect is quite nice, we would listen even if we weren’t watching a robot work. This is the kind of thing we should expect to see at the Guthman Musical Instrument Competition. [via Hacked Gadgets] […]